What is personhood? It is a separation that allows us to develop a personal point of view that is not directed by those around us. It is deliberately blocking out the fact that the universe already knows everything in order to have a chance at deeper understanding by learning these truths through experience.
Some of that learning hurts, and some of that brings the most intense joy imaginable. That is what we call being alive: being fully immersed in it in a way that brings us face to face with its realities every single moment of our existence.
To die then means to become more and less at the same time. Our detachment to this particular time and place, to this little heap of flesh falls away from us. It makes us lose ourselves in the sense that any definition of who we were that was based in material considerations is no longer applicable. It is something that many humans suffer with a great deal: isn’t who we are the same as what we do, what we own, what we achieved in this lifetime? What will be left when all of this falls away from us? Who is the real us behind the mask?
It is a question that many of us are afraid to pose, for fear of what the answer might be. For who knows really who they are themselves? As we rush through life, too busy to ever allow ourselves time to live it, it seems that what we do is the only thing that matters. Isn’t standing still the same as dying? Isn’t it a sign of giving up, of having lost our way in life?
This is a fear that is put inside us by modern society, where productivity is the scale on which the value of a human life is valued. And because we have been taught to think that way, we have also begun to see other life forms as less than ourselves. We see them as less economically active, and hence as less of a valued participant in the cycle of life, all the while forgetting that we owe our life to them, and that we wouldn’t even be here if they hadn’t been allowing us to use and abuse them for our own purposes.
It is hard then to confront the moment all of that posing will fall away from us. That is understandable. But.. maybe we can find another way? You know… why postpone death until our physical body dies? Why not do it now, or at least start contemplating what it would be like?
Once we start doing so, we realize just how much active dying is actually a way of becoming, of growing into ourselves, of stopping to put limits on how much we have to give. Of stopping to measure the monetary value of everything that we do, and everything that is given to us. If we choose to step past that boundary now, and remember that we are not separate, and have never been separate, then suddenly so much becomes possible.
When will you start dying?
